© 2002 Elena Fawkner

Time is inelastic. Despite what some of us persist in believing, it will NOT magically expand to accommodate all we have to do. So, in order to maximize time we have available, we have to spend it wisely. Here's how to do that.

STRUCTURE YOUR TIME

The very first thing to do is understand structure of your time. If you think of time you have available as some amorphous dimension, you will fritter it away on this and that without any real consideration of what is best use of time available. How many times have you got to end of your day and felt like you'd accomplished nothing even though you'd been "busy" all day.

All time is not equal. If you're a morning person, your morning time is worth more in terms of productivity than your late afternoon time.

So think of time as variable in terms of potential for accomplishment and identify your most valuable time. Do same for your intermediate-value time and your lower-value time.

Reserve your most valuable time for your most intellectually demanding activities. Your intermediate value time should be spent on important tasks that don't require quite same level of concentration. Finally, reserve your low-value time for activities that don't require much in way of concentration.

Now, obviously, if you have a full-time job away from home, decision of how to spend your 9 to 5 hours will largely be out of your hands. So, best you can do if you're a morning person is to try and take care of some of your intellectually demanding activities first thing in morning, say between 5:00 am and 7:00 am. On other hand, if you're a night owl, working a full-time job probably won't be much of a problem for you.

If you run your own business from home, however, effectively structuring your time in terms of peak, intermediate and low- concentration blocks can make a profound impact on your productivity if you use that time intelligently.

IDENTIFY WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

Now that you have some sense of how to best structure your time, you need to turn to what, exactly, you're going to spend that time on.

That means identifying what you have to do. And that means identifying what you don't have to do as flipside.

When identifying what you have to fit in to your schedule, think about all areas of your life. Making time for yourself is not something that you get around to only if there's time left over. Making time for yourself is as much a priority as anything else.

A good way of identifying activities that should be included in your schedule is to test them against criteria of furtherance of an objective. If activity does nothing to further any objective, why are you even doing it?

The most common mistake I find in clients I coach about presenting is failing to grasp this concept: When you're giving a presentation, you're not talking about XYZ, you're communicating to a group of individuals. Arrive early before your presentation and visit with individuals as they arrive. You'll find out all sorts of things you need to know that can help you stand out among presenters. Everyone knows their topic -- or should, and know how to give a presentation (or should), but it's knowing how to work particular and unique group in front of you that gets you asked back, gets you business, and builds your reputation.

The 15 minutes you spend mingling, make difference! (And BTW, don't rely on what you were told about this group. It's rarely reliable, and it isn't specific to your needs. Find our for yourself.)

1. Find out why they came. Ask questions such as "What brings you here?" WHY questions are never good to ask. People don't know, and/or it raises defenses. Any other personal information you can gather will make your speech more effective, and also gives you hints as to which of your services and products (you do have "table in back" set up, don't you?) they'd be most likely to need and to buy.

2. Find out what they expect you to talk about. You'll be surprised!

3. Get first and last names to use later in your presentation, and occupations if you can. You'll be able to work this into allusions and metaphors. For instance, I often talk about optimism and I give examples about how to attribute negative events. With information, I can give examples particularly relating to their fields of work.